The Experience of Clarity

If it is capable of promoting the intellect, then it proceeds from the "correct" to the recognition of the incorrect, and its passageway is  confusion .  At some point our skepticism realizes that there is nothing truly correct; there is only that which survives our most rigorous examination.  And confusion and frustration is by far  not  the enemy of clarity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

80 Sometimes the illusion yields to the reality and sometimes the reality yields to the illusion.  So to which do I hold fast?  Whichever makes me stronger at the given moment.  The essential thing is to remember that the one always returns to the other.  On the other hand, the suggestion here that reality and illusion want to meet is not evident to me.  That they want to collide is rather the case. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

81 I take my observations at face value, but their conclusions depreciate. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

82 Out of hunger, we swoop down from the idea, and snatch up our prey, lift it back to our heights ... and find ... just another idea. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

83 An idea is not a creation, but an object knocked out of place by another object and made obvious by the threat of disorder.  We round it off to shape and fit it into a familiar environment again ... to hide the danger.  This repression and falsifying, this chipping off certain pieces and allowing others to remain we wrongly call the “idea.”  To grasp the matter more fully we would have to include the confusion. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

84 The Self-made Man: How the mighty hunter caught a snake with his ankle. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

85 The mind is not more than the sum of its parts.  In fact, if we were all-knowing, mind would show itself to be much less ... since human vanity would have no place in the equation. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

86 The old question, Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? The new question, What part of this whole valued itself less by finding nothing amiss? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

87 The third thing: Water is part hydrogen and part oxygen and that third thing?  ... one part human. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

88 As the cloud of mentalism floats away, we see only this small, delicate mechanism which operates beyond our capacity for explanation ... and it is its simplicity which baffles us.  We are tempted to call it free will , but that too floats away.  We would call it determinism , but that would offend us.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

89 The Chess Player: We celebrate the fallibility of the computer, but only as long as its human origins remain concealed.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

90 I am incorrigible.  I would have every object of the universe mechanically predictable but myself. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

91 The greatest threat to self-mastery lies in the testimony of successful people.  Where there is fortune there is an excess of vanity and where there is vanity there is “cause and effect” ... all reasons twisted smugly inward ... toward the fortunate. The second greatest threat lies in the testimony of failures.  Where there is misfortune there is self-reproach and denial ... all “reasons” mangled and pointing everywhere. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

92 I do not despair for lack of meaning, but for lack of increase .  It is decreasing that forces the question of futility upon me.  Upon a sudden and incredible increase I do not have enough words for the meaning of life: its wonder is too great for me, yet I gratify myself in the attempt anyway.  I reason backwards and reconstruct a flattering chain of events, all of them “causes” of my success ... all previous events and “attributes,” good and bad, redeemed in this one unspeakable moment of victory. And yet all has been reversed ... all a rationalization of the egotist.  Every thought has run ahead, like an excited boy marching in front of a victory parade ... every word inverted before a vanity mirror ... so that in disaster one looks at the world for the first time without this mirror ... and all is a cryptic, meaningless tangle of arguments. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism